The Funnyman Who Repented: A Story

by MONTEIRO LOBATO

1

FRANCISCO Teixera de Souza Pontes, illegitimate scion of a Souza Pontes who owned some large Barreiro plantations, began to think seriously on life only upon reaching his thirty-second year.

A natural clown, he had used his comic gifts until I hen to make his way and provide him with home, food, clothing, and the rest. The currency he used in payment consisted of funny faces, jokes, stories about the English, and everything calculated to produce an effect on the facial muscles of the laughing animal commonly called man, by summoning him to chortle or break into guffaws.

He knew by heart the Encyclopedia of Laughter and Merriment by Fuão Pechincha, the most insipid author God ever let into this world; but Pontes’ art was so fine that the most pointless talcs received, when recounted by him, a special tang, enough to make his listeners froth at the mouth with pure joy.

He was a genius at imitating people or animals. The entire gamut of canine noises, from the baying at the wild boar, to the howling at the moon, and the rest, all these were molded in his mouth with such perfection that he could fool the dogs themselves — and even the moon.

He could also grunt like a pig, cackle like a hen, croak like a toad, scold like an old woman, whimper like a crybaby, call for silence like a congressman in power, or harangue like a patriot on the balcony. Faced with a favorable audience, what cry of biped or quadruped could he not imitate to perfection?

On other occasions, he would hark back to prehistoric times. As he had received some education, when his listeners were not ignorant he would reconstruct for them the paleontological roar of extinct monsters snarls of mastodons or the bellows made by colossal creatures at their first glimpse of hairy, apelike men lolling on tree ferns — a performance that would have greatly enhanced the lectures on fossils by our famous Barros Barreto.

On the street, if he ran across a group of friends Standing on the corner, he would steal up behind and bing! — he would deliver a slap with his wrist on the calf of the handiest leg. It was fun to witness the frightened leap and the startled exclamation of the unsuspecting victim, and, after that, the continuous laughter of the others, and of Pontes who gull awed in a manner all his own, a combination of the boisterous and musical as in Offenbach’s operas. Pontes’ laugh was a parody on the normal spontaneous laughter of a human being, presumably the only creature that could make that sound except a drunken fox; but he would suddenly stop, without being gradual about it, falling abruptly into a seriousness that was irresistibly funny.

In all his gestures and ways, in walking, reading, eating, in the most insignificant doings of life, this devilish fellow was different from all the others because he made them seem terribly ridiculous to one another. This reached such a point that merely to open his mouth or begin a gesture was sufficient to send all around him into spasms. Just his being present was enough. They hardly spied him before their faces were creased in smiles; if he made a move, ripples of laughter spread; if he opened his mouth, some roared, others loosened their belts, still others unbuttoned their vests. If he merely started to speak, Holy Mother! what outbursts, horselaughs, screams, chokings, snorts, and terrifying efforts to catch one’s breath.

“That fellow Pontes is unbeatable!”

“Stop, man, you’re killing me!”

The joker however wore an air of innocence on his idiotic face. “But I’m not doing anything. I didn’t even open my lips.”

“Ha! Ha! Ha!” the whole company shouted, tears streaming down their cheeks as they shook in spasms of uncontrollable laughter.

With the passing of time the mere mention of his name was enough to kindle boisterous merriment. If anybody uttered the word “Pontes,” the round of snorting hilarity was set going, the noise by which man rises superior to the animals that don’t laugh.

In this manner Pontes lived along into his early thirties in the midst of a smiling parabola, as it were, himself laughing and making others laugh, and never thinking of anything serious —the life of a sponger who exchanges funny grimaces for his meals and pays his small debts with a currency of excellent jokes.

A merchant to whom he owed some money said to him one day amidst sputters of laughter, “You at least are amusing —not like Major Sourpuss, who lets his bills go unpaid with a frown.”

This left-handed compliment vexed our joker, more or less; but his debt amounted to fifteen milreis, and it seemed better to swallow the taunt. However, the memory of that prick stuck in his mind like a pin in the cushion of his self-respect. Later on he felt the pins stick into him more and more, some lightly, others right up to their heads.

In the end, he couldn’t take it any longer. Fed up with the life he was leading, our playboy began to reflect on the pleasure of being taken seriously, of speaking and being heard without the exertion of facial muscles, of gesturing without breaking down the composure of friends, of walking along a street without hearing on his trail a chorus of “Here comes Pontes!” shouted in tones of people doubled up in bursts of merriment or all prepared to let out huge belly-laughs.

Reacting to this, Pontes tried to be serious.

Catastrophe.

Pontes, now harping on a sober string, naturally fell into the English style of humor. Whereas before he had figured as a diverting clown, now he was considered even more amusing as Gloomy Gus.

2

THE resounding success of what everybody imagined to be a new facet of his comic gifts made more morose the soul of our repentant joker. Was it then fated that he would never be able to strike out afresh on a road different from the one he had followed and which he now hated? Laugh, clown, laugh, that is thy destiny.

But the life of an adult has its solemn requirements, calling for gravity and dignity not so essential in the immature years. The most modest position in an office, the job of simple town selectman, demands the facial steadiness of at least some idiot who doesn’t laugh. One just can’t imagine a boisterous city father. Rabelais’s dictum has one exception: laughter is common to all the human species except to city aldermen.

With accumulating years, his judgment matured, his self-respect steadied, and parasitic meals began to taste sour. His currency of tricks seemed harder to coin; he could no longer cast it with wonted freshness, for he was using it now for a livelihood and not for idle relaxation as formerly. In his mind he compared himself to a circus clown, old and ailing, whom poverty forces to make funny faces out of his rheumatic pains because the paying public enjoys them.

He began to avoid people, and spent several months studying the changes necessary in him for the attainment of an honest job. He thought of being a counter salesman, or working in some factory, or being foreman of a plantation, or possibly opening up a bar — for anything seemed preferable to the comic foolishness of his present life.

One day, his plans well advanced, he decided to change his way of living. He went to a businesss friend and earnestly explained his wish to mend his ways, ending by asking him for a job in his firm, even if only as sweeper. Hardly had he finished his statement when his Portuguese friend, and those who were watching them nearby waiting for the point of the joke, all broke out into loud guffaws as if someone were tickling them.

“That’s a good one! It’s the best he has pulled off! Ha! Ha! Ha! So that now . . . Ha! Ha! Ha! You’re killing me, man! If you’re thinking of what you owe me for tobacco, forget it, for I’ve got my money’s worth. That Pontes is full of tricks.”

And the clerks, the customers, the idlers at the counters and even the passers-by halted on the sidewalk in front to enjoy the joke, and made the air quiver with their roars like the beat of a rattle, till their diaphragms ached.

Perturbed and insistently solemn, Pontes tried to make them understand they were wrong.

“I’m speaking seriously and you don’t have the right to laugh at me. For the love of God, don’t make sport of a poor man who is begging you for a job and who doesn’t want your laughs.”

The merchant loosened the belt of his trousers. “He’s speaking seriously, pff! Ha! Ha! Ha! Look, Pontes, you . . .”

Pontes walked out on him in the middle of his sentence and went off, his soul torn between despair and anger. This was too much. So society was rejecting him? Was he condemned to remain frozen forever in his comic mold?

He visited other firms, explained as best he could, implored. But his act was judged by unanimous agreement as one of the neatest tricks of an incorrigible joker. Many persons repeated the usual comment: “That devil of a fellow refuses to change his ways! And yet, he is no longer a child . . .”

Thwarted in his commercial quest, he turned toward agriculture. He sought out a ranch owner who had discharged his foreman and explained his sit uat ion to him.

After listening attentively to his statements, followed by the request to get the foreman’s place, the Colonel exploded in a hilarious burst, “Pontes the foreman! Sh! Sh! Sh!”

“But . .

“Let me laugh, man, for I don’t often get the chance here in the backwoods. Sh! Sh! Sh! That’s a good one! I’ve always said that for making jokes, Pontes, old boy, there’s no one your equal!”

And bellowing into the house, “Maricota, come out here and listen to this new one of Pontes. It’s a scream! Sh! Sh! Sh!”

On that day our unhappy joker wept. He finally understood that one cannot destroy in a twinkling what it has taken years to build. His reputation as the unexcelled life of the party, and as a joker unequaled and monumental, was built of lime too good and cement too hard to be overthrown suddenly.

3

YET he felt impelled to change his way of living. Pontes now turned his consideration toward a political job, for government is an accommodating employer, perhaps the only one approachable under the circumstances; it is impersonal, it has nothing to do with laughter and doesn’t even know intimately the separate units that make it up. Such an employer alone would take him seriously — yes, the road to salvation led that way.

He examined the possibility of serving in the post office, or the Department of Justice, or with the tax collector, and all the rest. Weighing the pros and cons carefully, with all the trumps in the deck, he fixed his choice upon the Federal Internal Revenue Office, whose head, Major Bentes, would probably not last long because of his age and a heart ailment. There was talk about his aneurism or tumor in an artery that might burst any time.

Pontes’ ace card was a relative in Rio, a wealthy fellow able to exert political pressure if certain changes in the government took place. Pontes followed him around and did so much to win him over to his idea that his relative finally dismissed him with a formal promise.

“Don’t worry, for if I get the break I expect in the government and your collector’s artery explodes opportunely, nobody is ever going to laugh at you again. Now get along, and tell me when your man dies, and don’t wait for his corpse to get cold.”

Pontes returned home radiant with hope and patiently awaited the movement of events, one eye on politics and the other on the tumor that was to provide his salvation.

The political crisis came first; ministers fell, others replaced them, and among the latter a parly bigshot who was associated with Pontes’ relative. The road now was half traveled. Just the second part remained.

Unfortunately, the Major’s health seemed steady, a affording no evident signs of an early decline. In the opinion of the doctors who killed patients allopathically, the tumor was a dangerous thing that might burst under the slightest strain. But the surly old tax collector, thus warned, was in no hurry to depart for a better world, leaving behind a life for which the fates had provided plenty of comfort and case. He did his best therefore to doublecross his incurable malady by following a rigidly methodical regimen. If some violent effort was to kill him, they needn’t worry, he just wouldn’t make such an effort.

Naturally, Pontes, already mentally the occupant of that sinecure, became impatient with this unsettling stalemate to his project. How was he going to remove this obstacle from his path? He studied up in the Chernoviz medical volumes the chapters on tumors, in fact memorized them; he went about investigating all that was said or written on the subject; he began to know more about it than Dr. Iodope, the local physician, of whom it may be reported here confidentially that he never knew anything at all in his whole life.

Having thus bitten into this tempting apple of science, Pontes was gradually led to the notion that he might hurry the man’s death by helping him to burst. Any exertion would kill him? Very well then, Souza Pontes would bring him to make that exert ion.

“A burst of laughter is an exertion,”he reflected satanically to himself. “A sudden guffaw could kill. Well, I’m an expert at making people laugh . .

Pontes passed many days in seclusion, holding a mental dialogue with the serpent of his temptation.

“Is it a crime? No! According to what code is it criminal to cause laughter? If a man should die of it, the blame should fall on his weak aorta.”

The mind of our evildoer became a battlefield where his plan fought a duel against all the objections sent against it by his conscience. His embittered ambition served as judge and God knows how many times said judge prevaricated, influenced by scandalous partiality for one of the contending parties.

As was to be expected, the serpent won and Pontes emerged once more into society a bit more lean, with hollows under his eyes, yet with a queer light of victorious resolution shining in them. Also noticeable to those who looked at him with penetration was the nervousness of his manner — but penetration was not an abundant virtue among his fellow citizens, and moreover the state of mind of a Ponies was a matter of no significance.

The future officeholder now began to forge careful plans for his campaign. First it was necessary to make contact with Major Bentes, a man who lived a retired life and was very little given to idle conversation; then to insinuate himself into his intimacy; study his whims and hobbies until he found in what part of his anatomy was located his heel of Achilles.

He began to frequent regularly the collector’s office under various pretexts, now for stamps on documents, again for information concerning taxes, anything that served as an opportunity for a bit of clever skillful conversation intended to undermine the old man’s hostility.

He even went there on the business of other people, to pay excise taxes, obtain permits, and errands of the sort; he made himself very useful to friends who had dealings with the Treasury.

The Major was astonished at the frequency of his visits and told him so but Pontes parried this remark by inventing masterful pretexts and persisted in his well-calculated plan of letting time take its course in wearing down the sharp angles of his acquaintance of the weak heart.

By the end of two months Bentes had become accustomed to that lively “chipmunk,”as he nicknamed Pontes, who after all seemed to him a kindhearted fellow, eager to be of service and quite inoffensive. It was only a step from that point to the time when he asked Pontes to help him out on a day when the work had piled up, and again after that, and even once more. This development finally made Pontes a sort of unofficial associate in his department. For certain services, there was no one like him. What industry! What subtlety! What tact! On scolding one of his clerks once, the Major held up Pontes’ diplomacy as an example and a reprimand. “You big idiot! Learn from Pontes who is skillful in everything and who is witty into the bargain.”

On that same day he invited him to dinner. Great was the exultation in the heart of Ponies! The fortress was opening its doors to him.

That meal marked the beginning of a series of movements in which the “chipmunk,”now an indispensable factotum, had a free field for his tact ics.

Yet Major Bentes appeared invulnerable. He never laughed, but limited his manifestations of hilarity to ironic smiles. A jest that forced other table companions to get up from their chairs and stuff their napkins in their mouths, hardly did more than bring a curl to the Major’s lips. And if the humor was not of extraordinary keenness, he used to humble the narrator without pity. “That’s an old joke, Pontes. You’ll find it in the Laemmer almanac for 1850; I remember reading it.”

Pontes smiled meekly, but within himself he took comfort with the reflection that if he hadn’t caught him that time, he would catch him some other time.

4

ALL his sagacity was focused now on the single goal of sounding out the weakness of the Major. Every man has some preference for a certain type of humor or satire. One is fond of licentious tales about fat friars. Another dotes on good-humored jests connected with German folk songs. Another would sell his life for a tale with Gallic spice. The Brazilian adores satire which exposes the boorish stupidity of the natives of Portugal or the Azores.

But the Major? Well, he didn’t laugh at humor served English fashion, nor German, nor French, nor even Brazilian. What was his type?

A systematic exploration, with the exclusion of humorous types proven ineffective, brought Pontes to the realization of the special weakness of his tough adversary; the Major licked his fingers for tales about Englishmen and friars. However, it was necessary for these to be worked in together. Separately, they missed fire. Such are the peculiarities of an old man. Whenever in the same story, beef-eating, ruddy Englishmen, in checkered suits, with cork helmets, formidable boots, with a pipe in their mouths, figured together with chubby friars, addicted to pipes and to feminine flesh, there and then the Major would actually open his mouth and interrupt the process of chewing, like a child who is being enticed with coconut candy. And when the point of the joke was sprung, he would laugh with pleasure, frankly, although without any abandonment endangering his state of health.

With infinite patience, Pontes banked on this sole type of humor and never left it for any other. He increased his repertory, regulated the dosage of wit and malice, and systematically bombarded the Major’s aorta with the products of a skillful combination.

When the story was lengthy because the narrator embellished it to delay and conceal the ending or heighten its effect, the old man showed his quickened interest and during the cleverly placed pauses he would ask for clarification or for the rest of the story. “Well, how about that rascal of a beefeater? What happened then? Did Mister John whistle?”

Although the fatal guffaw was slow in coming, the future tax collector did not despair, trusting in the fable about the pitcher that went to the water so often that it finally cracked. His plan was really not too bad. Psychology was working for him— and also Lent.

On a certain occasion toward the end of the Carnival, the Major gathered his friends around an enormous stuffed fish presented to him by one of his colleagues. The Carnival sports had enlivened the spirits of his table companions as well as those of their host, who on that day was contented with himself and the world, as if he had beheld some extraordinary marvel. The odors of cooking coming from the kitchen took the place of liquid appetizers and called forth upon all faces an expression of gastronomic anticipation.

When the fish was brought in the Major’s eyes sparkled. He doted on excellent fish, all the more when cooked by his faithful Gertrude. And at that banquet Gertrude surpassed herself in the seasoning which excelled the limits of the culinary art and rose to lyrical heights. What a fish! Vatel would have signed it himself with the pen of his helplessness moistened in the ink of envy, one of the clerks remarked, an observation read in Brillat-Savarin and in other artists of the palate.

Amidst swallows of strong but inferior wine, the fish was gradually being inserted into stomachs with appreciative fervor. No one dared to break the silence of this alimentary blissfulness.

Pontes felt that this was the opportune moment for his final blow. He had prepared a story about an Englishman, his wife, and two Franciscan friars, an anecdote that he had elaborated by the effort of the best gray matter in his brain, perfecting it during long nights of insomnia. For a number of days he had his trap all set, always awaiting the right occasion when everything would co-operate to obtain for him the maximum result.

This was the final hope of our villain, his last cartridge. If it misfired, he was resolved to put two bullets into his own brain. He realized it was impossible to contrive a more ingenious explosive than this story. If the sick artery resisted this shock, then the so-called tumor was a fake, the aorta a figment of the imagination, the Chernoviz medical disquisition a stream of nonsense, medicine a failure, Dr. lodope an ass, and he, Pontes, the most complete simpleton ever warmed by the sun —and therefore unfit to live.

Thus Pontes meditated, gazing appealingly with the eyes of psychology, on his intended victim, when the Major met him halfway; he blinked his left eye, a sign that he was all set to listen.

“Here goes now,” thought our bandit; and with peerless naturalness, picking up as if by chance a bottle of sauce, he began to read the label. “ Perrins: Lea and Perrins. I wonder if he can be a relative of that Lord Perrins who tricked two Franciscan friars?'

Intoxicated by the delicious fish, the Major’s eyes sparkled with a lustful light of greediness for a spicy story. “Two friars and a lord! This story must be A-l. Tell it to us, chipmunk.” And chewing unconsciously, he became absorbed in the fateful tale.

The anecdote ran along craftily, combining the usual threads of events until the denouement was near. It was related with a masterly art, clear and precise, in a strategic development full of genius. Halfway toward the end, the plot had the old man so spellbound that it held him in suspense, his mouth half-open, an olive stuck on his fork stopped in mid-air. A readiness to burst out laughing— now held in check but eager to explode — a roaring laugh about to erupt, illuminated his face.

Pontes hesitated. He foresaw the bursting of the artery. For an instant his conscience put a brake on his tongue, but Pontes kicked it aside and with a steady voice pulled the trigger.

Major Antonio Pereira da Silva Bentes let forth the first guffaw in his life, a loud resounding roar that could be heard to the end of the street, a bellow like that of Carlyle’s Teufelsdrockh facing Jean Paul Richter. It was his first, to be sure, but also his last, for in the midst of it his astounded companions saw him slump face down over his plate, as a jet of blood reddened the tablecloth.

The assassin rose, hallucinated. Taking advantage of the confusion, he slipped out into the street like a second Cain. He hid himself in his house, bolting the door of his room; his teeth chattered all night long, his perspiration ran cold. The slightest noise filled him with terror. Could it be the police?

It took weeks for that agitation of his soul to begin to calm down. Everybody attributed his indisposition to his sorrow over the death of his friend. Nevertheless, his eyes constantly beheld the same vision: the collector slumped over his plate, his mouth spurting blood, while in the air there echoed that shriek of his last laughter.

’While he was in this depressed frame of mind, he received a letter from his Rio relative. Among other things, this influential person wrote: “As you didn’t notify me in time according to our understanding, it was only through the newspapers that I found out about the death of Bentes. I went to the Minister but it was too late, the name of a successor had already been selected. Your carelessness made you lose the best chance in your life. Keep in mind for your guidance this Latin dictum: ’tarde venientibus ossa, whoever arrives late finds only bones’ — and be more alert in the future.”

5

ONE month later Pontes was found hanging from a beam, stiff, his tongue out. He had strangled himself with the leg of a pair of drawers.

When the news spread in the city, everyone was amused by this detail. The Portuguese departmentstore owner passed this comment before his clerks: “What a funny fellow he was! Even at his death he thinks up a prank. To hang oneself on one’s drawers! That’s a trick that only Pontes could pull off.”

And the group around him echoed in chorus a half-dozen “ Ha! Ha!’s” — the sole epitaph granted by society to poor Ponies.

Translated by Harry Kurz